Bamire et al pdf
Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of
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Business Studies, Factors Affecting Adoption of Agroforest, GAMETHEO1 PB OECON
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- Constraints to crop production by households
| Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of respondents The selected socioeconomic characteristics of users of the different agricultural inputs in the AEZs are shown in Table 2. Only 27 (9%) of the whole sample in all AEZs were users of the emerging products. 2 (7.4%) of this number were in the DS and 25 (92.6%) in the SGS. Males dominate the farming households in all the zones, with a mean of 26 years of farming experience. The only female respondent was in the DS, accounting for 1.7% of the entire sample in the zone. Average age of respondents varied between 47 years in the Sahel and about 56 years in Sudan. The age distribution across AEZs shows that all the respondents fall within the active age bracket of between 30 and 60 years (NBS, 2006; Kolawole, 2009; Bamire et al., 2010). This implies that most of the respondents are young and would be interested in trying technological innovations such as the emerging commercial, biological and chemical agricultural products made available to them. Respondents in the SGS had more years of formal education than in other AEZs, implying that most households in this zone could easily understand and use information on new technologies. This is capable of enhancing technology adoption and subsequent improvement of livelihood (Feder et al., 1985; Adesina and Zinnah, 1993; APFIC, 2010). Quite a large percentage of respondents (61% in Sudan, 50% in NGS, 51% in Sahel, 34% in SGS, and 33% in DS) had Islamic education, implying that information on new technologies could be effective if communicated through Islamic programmes and approaches. The main source of household income and livelihood was agriculture, involving more than 80% of the respondents who have been farming for over 20 years. A few of them was engaged in secondary occupation such as petty trading, craftsmanship and artisans though the highest was in the Sudan (27%) and the lowest (7%) was in the Sahel. Constraints to crop production by households Households in the project area were mainly involved in cereal-grain legume-based cropping systems. Cereals, particularly, maize and legumes (cowpea, soybean and groundnut) were the main crops grown in all the AEZs. The constraints to production varied across AEZs based on the major crops grown. Inadequate capital/credit ranked as first constraint to cereal production as claimed by about 82% of the households in SGS, 66% in DS, 33% in Sudan, and 10% in Sahel (Table 3). Drought ranked second and was predominant in the Sahel (44%) and NGS (43%), while inadequacy of agricultural inputs ranked third, particularly, with respect to the scarcity of inorganic fertilizer that was reported in the Sahel, Sudan, NGS, and DS. Seventeen percent of the respondents in |